A weekend with the iPhone 3G S

A few rainy days were spent moving from the Apple iPhone 2G to the 3G S

Even though my order status showed a delivery date of June 22, my new iPhone 3G S arrived on Friday morning as promised. Points to Apple for that, but equal points deducted for the oddness of the shipping notification and dates. But anyway, there it was, and naturally I had to set it up immediately. (Note: I wrote a business-tuned preview for the 3G S as well.)

I plugged my 2G into my laptop and synced it, then unboxed the 3G S and plugged it into the same system. At that point, I was prompted for my billing ZIP code and the last four digits of my SSN, and iTunes registered and activated the new phone in about 90 seconds -- talk about painless. I then restored the backup of my 2G phone to the 3G S, and everything was there: apps, settings, email, call logs, and so forth. Since I had used another Mac to sync music to my 2G, that didn't come across, but everything else did. I was up and running with the new phone in about 10 minutes, all told, from opening the box to making a call and checking e-mail. Frankly, this is how it should be done.

[ Find out InfoWorld Test Center's verdict on the new iPhone in "First look: iPhone 3G S is evolution in action" | For more iPhone reviews and analysis from InfoWorld, see "First look: iPhone OS 3.0 is better for business, but IT won't be satisfied" and "Your next iPhone: iPhone 3.0 update or iPhone 3G S?" ]

My first impressions were somewhat negative, but then again, after so many years of testing IT products, I tend to look for the bad things first. What I noticed was the screen is "warmer" than the 2G. The whites aren't quite as white. It's only really noticeable side-by-side, but it irked me. I've had friends say that they like it, but I am a fan of the 2G screen. Also, the screen on the 3G S has a several-pixel border around the edges that wasn't present on the 2G. It's quite noticeable in the sunlight, and I swear that the screen is slightly smaller than the 2G's screen due to this border. I've found the border to be quite annoying. I've asked a few others with a 3G S if they've noticed, and the results were inconclusive. Anyone want to corroborate?